You Are What You Eat

Have you ever heard the phrase, “you are what you eat”?  

Now, that doesn’t mean that if you eat a hamburger you become a cow.

Or if you eat some bacon you become a pig.

But there is a lot of truth in that saying.

Nutrients from the foods you eat provide the foundation of the structure, function, and integrity of every little cell in your body….from your skin and hair to your muscles. 

You may not feel it, but your body is constantly repairing, healing, and rebuilding your body.  That’s why we hear so much about how it’s so important to eat healthy foods. 

When your young, it’s easy to ignore that and think it doesn’t matter what you eat.  Who really wants an apple when that tantalizing piece of chocolate cake is calling your name?

But as we get older and our skin starts to get wrinkles and our hair starts to grey and we wake up feeling like we need a nap, we begin to think about it quite a bit more.

I’ll admit there were many times when I was younger that I’d choose to eat a poptart for breakfast instead of oatmeal or a bowl of wheat bran. I never really gave much thought to nutrition.  Just that it was fast and convenient.  

Sometimes, I’d come home from work and grab a bowl of salsa and tortilla chips for supper knowing that the salt intake was too high.  But that’s what I was craving and so that’s what I’d eat even though I knew it wasn’t good for me. 

As I’m getting older, I’ve become more conscientious concerning my food choices and starting taking extra supplements to help get the nutrients into my body that it needs to be more healthy. 

A lot of health issues we develop as we get older stem from eating unhealthy foods when we were younger….diabetes, heart issues, high blood pressure, etc.

Some of these issues arise from eating too many sweets or foods that are fatty and fried and so full of sodium it could make a salt shaker have a heart attack.

Let’s parallel this with our walk with God.
We are what we eat ‘spiritually’ as well.

Matthew 15:17-20

Do not ye yet understand, that whasoever entereth in at the mouth
goeth into the belly, and is cast out into the draught?
But those things that proceed out of the mouth
come forth from the heart;
and they defile the man.
For out of the heart proceed
evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, fornications,
thefts, false witness, blasphemies:
These are the things which defile a man….

Whatever we fill our minds and our hearts with is going to affect us spiritually. Meaning, what we allow our eyes to see and what we allow our ears to hear is going to affect us more than we realize. It will get into our heart and have an affect on what we think about. It WILL affect our walk and our closeness with God.

Oh, Be Careful Little Eyes What You See

Does anyone remember that old children’s song, “Oh be careful little eyes what you see”?

It goes like this: “Oh be careful little eyes what you see. Oh, be careful little eyes what you see.  For the Father up above is looking down with love.  So be careful little eyes what you see.”

Scientific studies have proven that what you see and hear will have an effect on what  you think about which in turn can affect your behavior.

Studies have shown that playing violent video games has had a negative effect on young people and can cause them to exhibit increased violent and aggressive thoughts and feelings.   They become withdrawn socially.  And it’s even had an affect on their grades in school.

I have to wonder if there’s a connection between these violent video games and school shootings.  I don’t recall ever hearing of school shootings before video games were invented.

Video games used to be cute and innocent.  You could tell it was merely a game but now they try to make the games as realistic as possible.  The people look real and then when the character is shot, they make the gamer feel empowered and excited because they’ve defeated another foe and it’s on to the next level.

Children have a hard time discerning between fantasy and reality as it is.  When they spend hour after hour after hour playing games in which the main goal is to kill others, it will have an affect on their thinking and emotions. 

They are filling their minds with violence and gore. And it will get into their heart.

TV and movies have progressed from innocent shows like “Leave it to Beaver”, “Andy Griffith”, and “Little House on the Prairie” to shows that now promote violence, adultery, homosexuality, and all sorts of ungodly, anti-biblical ways of living. 

Cuss words were never permitted before on these shows.  They were either left off or bleeped out.  But now, they say the foulest and crudest cuss words openly and without shame and the listener no longer flinches when they hear it. 

The goal of Hollywood is to desensitize people to the sinful actions and actually make them feel like it’s justified and ok.

**movies promote and support adultery
**Disney promotes children disrespecting their parents
**Homosexuality is being promoted and pushed – confusing children
**witchcraft and sorcery is glorified – Bewitched, Harry Potter, Wicked

The push is to cast doubt concerning the existence of God and mock any belief in Jesus.  The movies make Christians look like crazy cultish people all the while glorifying false gods such as Zeus and other Greek mythology.

And it’s working – because what you allow your eyes to see and your ears to hear will get into your mind and heart and eventually affect you spiritually.

Psalm 101:3
I will set no wicked thing before mine eyes:
I hate the work of them that turn aside;
it shall not cleave to me.

Be careful what you let your eyes see and look upon!
It will get into your heart and affect you spiritually.

Oh, Be Careful Little Ears What You Hear

What we listen to will affect us spiritually as well.
It will affect what you think about.

Cuss words can get into your mind and before you know it, it comes out of the mouth. And you think, “where did that come from?”

It comes from what your hearing…whether from movies or those around you.

Some have unsaved family members and can’t help what comes out of their mouth. In that case, pray, plead the Blood of Jesus and ask God to keep that from getting into your heart.

While we can’t help those situations, we can be careful what we allow our ears to hear through the movies/tv shows playing and the music we listen to.

Studies have shown music is powerful and can have an affect on how you feel or what you think about. 

Music can affect a person’s emotions.  Even without words, music can make a person feel happy or it can make them feel sad.  With words added to music, it can have an even greater affect.

Gangsters have reported that they turn up head banging rock music and pump it into their head to desensitize themselves before going to kill someone.

I’ve been in stores or restaurants and no matter how hard I try, the words to the songs end up penetrating my ears.  I have to rebuke and pray against it because these songs are usually promoting and glorifying every thing that goes against what the Bible instructs. …

• Rebellion.
• Murder
• Unfaithfulness (adultery)
• Fornication
• lust 
• and such like  

If you listen to something other than Christian music, stop to realize what that song is promoting.  

• Is it helping you become a better person?  
• Is it helping you to become more like Jesus? 
• Or is it promoting lust of the flesh?

Be careful what you allow your ears to hear…for it will get into your heart! 

2 Peter 2:4-8
For if God spared not the angels that sinned,
but cast them down to hell,
and delivered them into chains of darkness, to be reserved unto judgment;
and spared not the old world,
but saved Noah the eighth person, a preacher of righteousness,
bringing in the flood upon the world of the ungodly;
and turning the cities of Sodom and Gomorrha into ashes
condemned them with an overthrow,
making them an ensample unto those that after should live ungodly;
and delivered just Lot,
VEXED WITH THE FILTHY CONVERSATION OF THE WICKED:
(For that righteous man dwelling among them,
IN SEEING AND HEARING,
VEXED HIS RIGHTEOUS SOUL
from day to day with their unlawful deeds;)

Our souls SHOULD be vexed when we see or hear something that the Bible speaks against and condemns as sin. There should be something in us that is grieved when we hear anything ungodly.

It will get into the heart and mind of the listener and affect them.  It will make a person spiritually unhealthy and lead to spiritual death.

That’s why we need to fill our minds with the things of God.

That’s why we often stress the need to have a daily prayer life and to read the Bible daily.

Listening to Christian music helps us to become God-focused rather than thinking about the flesh and things of this world.

Christian music focuses our thoughts upward in worship to God.
While worldly music gets us to focus on things of this earth, our own desires, our own wants, our own lusts, and thinking on carnal things.  

Which one is helping us draw closer to Jesus? Wordly music or Christian music?

We are what we eat – physically and spiritually.
We need to fill our minds and hearts with the things of God.
We need to fill our minds with the Word of God.

The Bible talks about the ‘washing of water by the Word.’

Eph 5:26-27
That He might sanctify and cleanse it with
the washing of water by the Word,
That He might present it to Himself
a glorious Church, not having spot, or wrinkle,
and or any such thing;
but that it should be HOLY and WiTHOUT BLEMISH.

Our minds get bombarded with the filth of this world everyday.
Reading the Bible daily helps to wash that filth out of our minds.

We need to fill our minds with the things of God.

I recently posted a Bible study titled, “CRAVE the WORD.”   We need to crave the Word of God and the things of God more than the things of this world.  

Matthew 5:6

Blessed are they which do HUNGER and THIRST after righteousness:
for they shall be filled.

We need to HUNGER and THIRST after righteousness – eat what is spiritually healthy

Sometimes our appetites are not right….we crave the wrong things.

It takes discipline to change a bad habit.

You will have to tell your flesh ‘No!” to its wants and wordly desires.

You’ll be tempted and tried. But the more you…  (James 4:7)

(1)             Submit to God

(2)            Resist the devil (say No to sin and sinful ways)

(3)            The devil WILL flee from you

**While on the Daniel fast – I found the longer I ate healthy food, the less I wanted unhealthy food.

The more you ingest the Word of God, the more you will crave and desire the things of God.

Challenge:

Pay attention to what you are feeding your spiritual man

Discipline yourself to change any bad habits you may have.